I think this is the most reasonable way to distill the issue. But what's the distinction between licensing for speech when at the same time you don't need to pass a knowledge to prevent you from selling books with misinformation (excluding libel, of course)?

I got my license about four years ago and I work as a guide full-time. I have yet to be asked to show mine even once. I've heard about a couple spurts of enforcement for other guides. Nothing major.

The way I see it, DC just wants money any way they can get it. There's also a Guild of Professional Tour Guides and I suppose some of those members might support the requirement because it means less competition. That's conjecture.

My opinion? It's largely silly to have to pass a municipal test to be a tour guide. If I can sell a book here with misinformation, I should be able to read the book out loud without a license. In the end, though, it appears that it doesn't really affect the guides--just the business owners who want to pay their guides as little as possible.

Is that really a problem serious enough to require regulation though? A doctor who doesn't know what they are doing can kill you, a carpenter who doesn't know what they are doing can kill an entire house of people, a civil engineer who doesn't know what they are doing can kill thousands of people. It is pretty clear they need licenses.

A tour guide who doesn't know what they are doing can...send you home with some inaccurate factoids. Not exactly a situation in dire need of regulation. Maybe a situation in need of a bad Yelp review at worst.

I've been on plenty of walking tours in Europe where I didn't expect the tour guide to provide a license, nor did I think to ask such a ridiculous question. They were very informative and in a Wikipedia world you're free to verify their facts. Also, many worked solely for informal donations. Its not the same as a drivers license which tests technical skill. What about people who lead ghost tours which by definition are full of shit?

Reading the comments in this thread is pretty disturbing--there's a certain lemming mentality to people who believe unless you have a "license" you are "an idiot" or likely to intentionally mislead people.

DC tours should be just like any other industry catering to out-of-towners: The ones that people like get the publicity and the business. If a company is throwing dummies out on tours and everybody gets annoyed because he thinks the Washington Monument is a rocket ship, well, that company probably isn't going to last long.

I'm not any kind of militant free-market person, but this really does seem like a situation where people can protect themselves from the bad eggs.